To Spare the Innocent
by Advicepuppy
Summary: As an Imperial Guardsman is clearing a house on an Eldar farmstead, he reaches a critical point in his life, where his devotion to the Emperor is strained more than ever.  First fanfic. One-shot, but will write similar longer story Criticism welcome


**Okay, I've decided to do the following. This story will stay as a one-shot. This is how it is. What I will do is take this and change it slightly to make for a story that will be slightly more canon, and allow for more depth into the story as it goes on. I will publish the edited version later on under "Suffer not the Xenos to Live (Extended)". Sound good? Cool. By the way, seeing that nearly one hundred people read this puts me on cloud 9000, I tell you. I think I've found another hobby to consume my life -.-**

He lifted his boot, shifting his balance toward his other foot planted on the ground and, leaning forward, kicked out with all of his might. The door was made of some kind of relatively weak material, as was indicated by it being completely dislodged from its mounts. The interior of the small building, what appeared to be a farmhouse, was dark. Light crept in from the open doorway, casting his elongated shadow across the floor and onto the wall opposite him. There was some overturned furniture; it appeared that the inhabitants had left with haste. In the middle of this farmstead, on some corner of an Eldar craftworld, Andron Jarek now found himself. He and his unit had been called upon, sent light-years across the galaxy, spent months upon a troop transport, and had arrived on this craftworld whose name he did not even know merely days ago. He and his unit had been sent to scout ahead, searching for a route to flank behind the xenos scum and eradicate them and their unholy existence from the universe. His squadmates were moving to search other buildings in the area. He was alone.

Andron raised his lasrifle, activated the lamp attached to the bottom of its handguard, and stalked into the dwelling. Despite his mind being almost utterly focused on staying alive against a foe so dangerous, he noticed several things as he trained his rifle and its light across the walls. The smell; food… Someone had been cooking something. He saw smoke curling through his lamp's beam, and after scanning the rest of what was the equivalent of a living room, he assumed, entered the room from which the smoke was coming.

He trained his light across the room, and saw nobody. Upon a burner sat a pot filled with some kind of meal which was now burning with increasing life. He coughed, and moved it. The smoke began to clear, and he could see more clearly once again. He took in his surroundings.

A table, surrounded by four mats, exotically shaped goblets, a clear container of the one thing that connected every race, no matter how different: water, all sat upon the table. The walls were a combination of green and purple, with curving patterns lining them. He hears the faintest bump above him, and instinctively snaps his rifle toward where the noise came from. Staring at the ceiling, he then looks for a staircase. He clears two more rooms, and finds a staircase. It curves gently upwards, and leads to another floor roughly ten feet above the last.

He widens his stance, and snaps his rifle down to both ends of the hallway.

_Nothing_…

Three doorways lead to separate rooms from the hall. He enters the closest one first. Taking a deep breath, he pivots around the doorframe, leveling his rifle and training it across the room.

_Still nothing…_

There are two thick mats on the floor, their coverings disorderly and tossed about. There is a small door in the wall. He slowly creeps up to it and, holding his rifle heavy with one hand, reaches out to open the door. His heart pounding, every horror pict he had ever seen as a child flashing through his mind, he pulls open the door. He lets out a short cry as a robe falls to the floor.

_You gakking fool! This is not how a brave servant of the God-Emperor is supposed to behave!_

He exits the room, his nerves returning to normal. He enters the second room, and there is a larger mat, presumably for two. Another smaller door, and more robes.

_Heh, like my father used to wear…_

The third door is closed. Andron is sure he heard something, and he can feel his pulse in his head. He opens and closes his fingers upon the grips of his lasrifle, and positions himself next to the door frame, with his rifle held up. He squints, takes a deep breath, opens his eyes once more, and kicks down the door, pointing his lasrifle across the room. After a split second as his mind interprets what it's seeing, his blood runs cold and his breath catches in his throat.

In the corner directly across from him, are two of them.

_A mother and a child._

She holds her child tight, his face buried into her shoulder, her hands pulling his face into her. She wears a gown of red. It rolls softly off of her shoulders, and its somewhat excessive length piles itself on the floor. She is tall. Even though she is crouched to her child's height, he can tell that she most likely stands slightly over six feet tall. Every cell in his body is screaming at him to not do what he does next. Every ounce of his faith is screaming at him to pull the trigger, to end their blasphemous existence and be done with it.

He looks into her eyes.

Anger, sadness, the slightest amount of fear, comes from her eyes. Even in the darkness, he can see that they are green. Her hair is long, nearly down her back, and golden, yet so light as to be nearly white. It shines gently in the sunlight intruding into the room. Her long, pointed ears protrude from her hair, angled slightly upwards and extending elegantly back. The color of her skin is similar to his. Not pale, not dark. Her nose is somewhat pointed, her entire face slightly angular, but strangely…

_Do. NOT!_

Andron's grip tightens upon his rifle. Her child risks a glance and sees him doing so. He buries his head even further into her, trying to escape the horror of his situation. She stands, still holding the boy close. He was right; she is taller than him by a few inches. The gown's slack is taken up, and it tightens around her form. Andron inhales sharply.

The gown is thin, flowing delicately down her body. It hangs loosely on her shoulders, and his gaze follows it downward. It falls over her breasts, and then returns to molding around her body as it continues toward the floor. Her sides curve elegantly inward, before rolling out again at her hips. The light on his rifle silhouettes her figure to a degree under the gown. She is the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

_Woman? This is a xenos! It is an affront to the God-Emperor! It must be destroyed!_

_Why? This craftworld was nowhere near any human planets, it was only found by long-range scouts. It posed no threat._

_YOU DO NOT QUESTION YOUR FAITH! YOU SERVE WITH UNWAVERING LOYALTY AND DEVOTION, AND DO WHAT YOU ARE TOLD!_

Andron is snapped back to reality as he hears the distinct crack of lasrifle shots a hundred meters away. He glances at the woman's face again. A tear runs down her face. It pains him to see it.

His earpiece crackles into life, and he hears faint yelling and swearing, with another voice yelling for presumably the one yelling to stop moving. He also hears laughter.

"_We found two of the vermin in a building out here. Looks like an older and younger one. The son of a bitch shot Horkun; got him right in the ass. Dumb bastard probably never fired a weapon in his life. Everything's dead here."_

Andron looks the woman in the eyes, her angelic and alien beauty consuming his thoughts once again. She grips her child tight, staring Andron in the eyes. More tears begin to stream down her face. Her lip quivers ever so slightly. She sighs, drawing in and exhaling a quivering breath, her breasts rising and falling with the action. Andron begins to breathe heavily, taking note. Everything about her is simply divine. She is the most perfect thing he has ever seen. Every terrible thing he had ever done in service of the Emperor pales in comparison to destroying something so perfect, xenos or not. Orks deserved to die, Tryanids deserved to die, but she was more precious to him than even his own life. He flexes his hands on his rifle once again. The child begins sniffle. His mind tells him to shoot, to burn, to destroy what stands in front of him in the Emperor's Holy Fire. However his heart, his soul, and his morality, no matter how impacted by his faith, say otherwise.

"_Jarek, you got anything?"_

_It is your duty! You are bound by your service to kill them!_

_ It's not right!_

_ Will you be a heretic? Will you betray humanity? It is not "right". It is heresy!_

He has reached the most important crossroads in his life. The next three seconds will determine who he is for the rest of his life. He will have to live with his decision until the day he dies. Both have horrendous ramifications. Everything he has seen in the past ten minutes flashes through his mind. These were not animals he was looking at. It was a mother and her son. They had been living peaceful lives before they were utterly shattered by him and his comrades, who he was beginning to loathe. He also remembered a fact he had learned off-hand about the eldar: They live for nearly a thousand years. He is surprised he has made it even to twenty-two. In front of him stand millennia of potential, of life to be had or extinguished. The choice, however, falls on him, the man who will live a blink of an eye in the lives of the people whose fates rest in his hands. He makes his decision.

"Clear."

* * *

><p><em><strong>EXTENDEDALTERNATE VERSION (MUCH BETTER) IS CALLED "Suffer not the Xenos to Live"**_

_**Please read after this one and tell me what you think, because that's gonna be my main work for a while.**_

**I don't want to brag or anything, this is just more to get an idea of how efficient I am at writing: I wrote this in about 2 hours with little forethought. How does that compare to your other experiences? **

** It seems that I've switched tenses somewhere along the lines. I don't feel like changing it, but I'll try to avoid doing so next time. Any preference for past or present? It seems that there is quite a lot of present tense in fanfics. Anyway, yeah, I know it's kinda like LCB, but I was just reading "_Path of the Warrior"_ (an actual novel) and as I read, Space Marines and humans were just ransacking the f*ck out of this craftworld, and I was like... why? They didn't do anything, I mean hell you dumbasses probably had to go months out of your way to get there just to destroy a beautiful society of peaceful people of an infinitely superior caliber to yourselves. Oh well, it's what we do best, isn't it? Anyway, this actually strays somewhat from what I had originally intended, as I imagined it being in a city, sort of, with the guy's commissar waiting right outside, and him simply calling "Clear" after a much shorter encounter. I like this one better, however, as it allows for me to continue into a possible epic saga. I might have to whack the kid, though, for it to take off... oh well, but stuff like that happens in war, right?**

**Right?**


End file.
